Read Online Human Trafficking Around the World by Stephanie Hepburn - Free Book Online

good experience working on the power plant. They were treated well and were paid overtime. The workers felt that the employer valued them, and, according to Nelson, Wanzek has stated that the men were excellent workers. Then, on the last day on the job the men received notice that they should come to headquarters. This is when the men were arrested. “It seems coincidental that the employer [Wanzek Construction] felt compelled to perform its civic duty of reporting the men to ICE after the job was complete, after they no longer needed the skilled services of the men,” Nelson said. The Cass 23 workers had entered the United States legally with H-2B visas, which they obtained through their alleged traffickers. Because the visas are employer specific, when the men escaped the labor camp and trafficking experience, they lost their visas. If their T visa applications are accepted, the men will be able to legally live and work in the United States for three years and can subsequently apply for permanent resident status (a green card). While waiting for the lawsuit to proceed, the men faced a long time when they could not legally work but needed income to survive. “Their biggest crime was trying to support themselves while the justice system slowly ground on,” Nelson said. “I have never seen a situation where people were so victimized and continuously trapped by a system that is ours.” 18
    What is most surprising about this case is that the workers were prosecuted regardless of the trafficking assertion. Drew Wrigley, then-U.S. attorney for the District of North Dakota, was aware of the trafficking allegations before he decided to prosecute the workers, but he was more concerned with the workers’ visa statuses than with their alleged-victim statuses. “Nothing in those allegations would allow them to disappear in the American mosaic and reappear in North Dakota and obtain employment,” Wrigley told
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reporter Patrick Springer (Springer, 2008c). Aside from the fact that Wrigley’s actions are in direct conflict with the objective of the TVPA, deporting victim-witnesses can obviously significantly weaken a case against the victims’ traffickers.
    Like many law-enforcement units, ICE has historically used arrest quotas. Until recently, fugitive tracking teams (consisting of four to seven agents) in the Fugitive Operations Program had to arrest at least 1,000 fugitives per year (Taxin, 2009). The controversial Fugitive Operations Program has received much negative publicity surrounding the large number of noncriminal arrests resulting from agent raids. The Migration Policy Institute reported that 73 percent of nearly 97,000 persons arrested by the Fugitive Operations Program between 2003 and 2008 did not have criminal records. 19 Some experts blamed the large number of noncriminal arrests on the arrest quotas of the Fugitive Operations Program. Additionally, arrest quotas can obstruct efforts to arrest criminal offenders, whose cases can take more time. Then, in August 2009, ICE director John Morton announced the elimination of arrest quotas in the Fugitive Operations Program and stated that the program would focus on criminals who have ignored deportation orders. “The Fugitive Operations Program needs to focus first and foremost on people who have knowingly flouted an immigration removal order, and within that category, obviously we will focus first on criminals,” Morton stated. “I just don’t think that a law-enforcement program should be based on a hard number that must be met,” Morton said. “I just don’t think that’s a good way to go about it. So we don’t have quotas anymore” (Gorman, 2009c, p. 11).
    Whereas immigration violations such as illegal border crossing and overstaying a visa have historically been treated as administrative or civil offenses, persons who have ignored deportation orders are now considered fugitives (Mendelson, Strom, & Wishnie, 2009; Rood, 2009). Morton told reporters